Zisis N. Sakellaris

In this paper we examine the flow generated by coupled surface and internal small-amplitude water waves in a two-fluid layer model, where we take the upper layer to be rotational (constant vorticity) and the lower layer to be irrotational. The presence of vorticity greatly complicates the underlying analysis, yet it generates a rich array of otherwise unobservable phenomena such as the presence of critical layers, and stagnation points, in the fluid interior. We employ a phase-plane analysis to elucidate the qualitative behaviour of streamlines for a range of different coupled-wave, and vorticity, regimes. Although the water waves considered are linear in the fluid dynamics sense, the dynamical systems which govern their motion are nonlinear.

In this paper, we derive a higher‐order Korteweg–de Vries (HKdV) equation as a model to describe the unidirectional propagation of waves on an internal interface separating two fluid layers of varying densities. Our model incorporates underlying currents by permitting a sheared current in both fluid layers, and also accommodates the effect of the Earth's rotation by including Coriolis forces (restricted to the Equatorial region). The resulting governing equations describing the water wave problem in two fluid layers under a “flat‐surface” assumption are expressed in a general form as a system of two coupled equations through Dirichlet–Neumann (DN) operators. The DN operators also facilitate a convenient Hamiltonian formulation of the problem. We then derive the HKdV equation from this Hamiltonian formulation, in the long‐wave, and small‐amplitude, asymptotic regimes. Finally, it is demonstrated that there is an explicit transformation connecting the HKdV we derive with the following integrable equations of a similar type: KdV5, Kaup–Kuperschmidt equation, Sawada–Kotera equation, and Camassa–Holm and Degasperis–Procesi equations.